90 THe CURJ\.eNT CINeMA Lady Zelda W HEN people of talent get in- vol ved in the movie business, they rarely play their talent straIght; they bend it to what they think of as the "demands" of the medi- um-that is, to what movies have al- ways done. And so they brIng to movies not the best of themselves but the worst. Robert Bolt appears to think that the shopworn conceits of old trash become "filmic" gestures. when they're staged big enough-and with a full 0 rcn est fa sighing, throbbing, and moping. After adapting his pIa} "A Man for All Seasons," and working on three screenplays for David Lean, Bolt has now directed his own sc re e n pIa y of "Lady Caroline Lalnb." The movie tnes for the S'lIne colossal lyricism as "Ryan's I)aughter," his last col1aboration with l.lean; this, too, is Panavision pulp- five-and-dime romantic passions made gothic by the magnitude of the back- drops The movie opens with Caroline (Sarah Miles) galloping furiously across vast landscapes to arrive, final- ly, at a huge palace, where she makes her way through a corps of servants and dashes upstairs through acres of corridors to locate her mother (Pamela Brown) and announce breathlessly, "Mama, he has proposed!" After such an amusingly overhlown introduction, we look forward gaily to more roman- tic camp-especiall} since Sarah Miles barely attempts to sustain the period il- lusion, and wears androgynous adapta- tIons of Regency clothes, and cropped hair. But Bolt can't reach this visual hyperbole again, and he studied with a dull master-the movie is in the calen- dar-art school of late David Lean. Bolt is less "tasteful" than Lean but equally lacking in energy. He actually pulls out the old wheeze of having the heedless, impetuous Caroline toss her diamond bracelet into a crowd of ItalIan beggars and then stand paralY7ed with horror while the onew ho retrieves it is killed b} the others. (Bolt seems as thought- less as his nincompoop heroine, ince he tries to make poetr) out of the arc of the diamonds flying through the aÍ1.) And at the end when Caroline, in her nightIe, wanders chilled and forlorn to fall dead of a broken heart In a moon- lit gazebo, Bolt cuts to her husband, far away, who wakes from hIS sleep at the moment she hItS the deck. This telepathic bit was corny In 1 922, in " N f " b h ' h . os eratu, ut t ere s not lng, ap- parently, that Bolt is ashamed to throw in. Some movie directors can make this 'ìort of garbage payoff, but not Bolt. It's easy to perceive that he admires lush extravagance, and wants to take the old M-G-M stvle and do it to the hilt. And though that might not be worth do- ing, it would be fun. However, he can't: he has neither the tech- nique nor the flair. Wha t you see is care- ful preparation for ex- cess-whIch then fiz- zles out Intellectually, he's shameles ; but he's inhibited. He's a square Ken Russell. Russell overheats everything; Bolt can't get anything warmed up. The Caroline Lamb of this movie, unlike purring Joan Greenwood, with her naughty sweet-shepherdess smiles, in "The Bad Lord Byron," in 1948, is 'l bewildered, neurotic, mistreated wom- an. However, this new movie is about the romance of mistreated women, the romance of self-destruction. Sarah Miles looks impish-more changeling than great lady-but she goes through a revamped version of the agonies of the big women stars of the past. She fights to live to the utmost, openly and fearlessly, but she is frail and becomes confused b} the hypocritical standards of a society that cares more for discre- tion than for honesty; she suffers and she sacrifices herself. In other words, Bolt has absorbed some women's-lib at- titudes into his gush, so that Caroline Lamb can seem an early free spIrit wrecked by sexist double standards. She is misunderstood by everyone; consId- ered irratIonal for wanting to be open; humiliated; and driven into melan- cholia. Her fineness of spirit is never truly appreciated. (Remember Susan Hayward in "I vVant to LIve!") In order to present her in this light., Bolt has distorted history in countless ways, and has knocked off his heroine before she could do what she's probably best known for: write the scandalous novel "Glenarvon," in whIch she paid Byron back for wearying of her and attacked her estranged husband, William Lamb, who later became Prime Minister un- der Victoria (he is played here b) Jon Finch). Bolt has, in fact, through most mJ c.c( of the movie made her brainless and resourceless-a victim of society rathel than an engaged member of it. (The woman who had the buttons on her page boys' uniforms inscribed with the words "Don't trust Byron" was cer- tainly morc flamboyantly bitch-foolish than Bolt's pitiable creature.) In the movie, she rUIns herself for the sake of her husband after he has helped her re- cover from her Infatuation with By- ron-Richard Chamberlain., trying to be demonic in beetle brows that give him a permanent scowl. This Byron is presented as a hulking, arrogant boor and d phony. (As a piece of miscasting, Chamberlain's Bvron rivals Gregory Peck's Ahab.) Maybe for the sake of her beIng a total victim, and the onh victim, this Byron doesn't even have a limp. Bolt, in other words, plays it both ways-Caroline is a symbolic confused modern woman trying to liberate hel- self, and she is also the hapless heroine of traditional fiction, giving her all fOI love. She's a loser who limps enough for everybody. The movie thrashes about from one style and point of view to another. rrhere's that Ken Russell side: kinky Caroline in jewels and black paint entering a ball as Byron's blackamool slave; CarolIne, cast off by Byron, dressed like a coach boy and running alongsIde his carriage, carrYIng a torch; Caroline hysterically stabhing herself at a formal dinner party and the camera spinning so the blood can splatter d roomful of shocked ladies. There's the arch British historical movie, with snooty epigrams for Margaret Leigh- ton, as Lady Melbourne (William Lamb's mother), to deliver, and show- off hits for Laurence Olivier, as the Duke of Wellington, and Ralph Rich- ardson, 'lS the King. And there's the sad-sack women's-lib kitsch. If we can tell where Bolt's heart is from his writ- ing style, his sympathies are with the worldly-wise cynics. When Caroline's housekeeper says, "A broken heart, that's what she died of," Bolt gives the jaded Lady Melbourne the best line of the movie: "My God, wouldn't she!" He seems to he divided between think- ing Caroline a fool and wanting to ex- ploit her as a female rebel-wIthout-a- cause. But you can't tell anything from his style as a dIrector. The film has no sweep; the scenes are like beads on a string. Though the movie was photo- graphed by the normally fluent Os- wald Morris, it looks almost as stiff as the movies Freddie Young shoots for David Lean. Like Lean, Bolt doesn t know where to place actors or how to move crowds; the groupies who cluster